Dividing Up Your Assets during Divorce Going through the emotional stress of a divorce is quite enough.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of technical things that have to be

dealt with as well. In order to minimize the stress, costs, and

length of the divorce, follow these tips for divvying up your

assets:

Be Nice Before you even begin, do your best to be nice. The nicer you

are, the better of a deal you will both end up with. You don’t

want to have to take this process in front of a judge – which is

costly, frustrating, and often less fair. Especially if you have

sentimental attachments to certain things, discussing things

directly with your ex can lead to compromises and satisfaction

on both sides.

Starting Out First, get together and make a list of all your assets. Many

couples find it useful to order them in terms of monetary value. As you do, you’ll start building a sense

of what you’ll be dealing with and what pieces you want. From there, you will be ready to start splitting

up your stuff.

Dividing Tactics There are several different ways you can go about splitting up your assets. Here are a few of them:

Talk it through

If both of you are quite considerate and willing to compromise, you may be able to simply go by the

“logical owner/recipient” of each item. You know who values what and who uses what. If you’re able to

split everything by simply saying, “I want this and that and those and you can have the rest,” after a few

switches here and there you could both end up quite satisfied.

One by One

If things are a little more tense, you can each take turns choosing one item from the list. This is where

listing items by monetary value comes into play. This system should result in a fairly equal split, and

perhaps with a few trades, you’ll both be satisfied.

Cutting the Cake

Another method is the “cutting the cake” technique. One person splits the assets into two equal parts

and the other choses. You can either decide on your own who will be doing the splitting, or you could

flip a coin. Winner splits, loser chooses first.

Yard Sale

If you’d rather not go through the process of splitting up valuables,

you could always hold a yard sale or put your things for sale online

and split the money you get once the sale is over. That way, you can

start fresh and new without old memories tied to old objects.

The Big Stuff As well as you splitting your “stuff” may go, you still will probably

need help splitting the big things like your home, car, family business,

or retirement. Decisions like this might have to involve the court or

other legal advice. Don’t hesitate to turn to your Tacoma divorce

lawyer; he/she will be able to help you out.

Hopefully at the end of the day, you can part ways amicably and start

a new life comfortably.

Photo Credit: John C Bullas, Matt Dale